A Nigerian Mathematican Claims To Have Cracked 156-Year-Old Maths Problem

A serious problem that has been confusing
mathematicians for almost 150 years may have been cracked by a Nigerian
university professor. Dr Opeyemi Enoch, from the Federal University in the city
of Oye Ekiti, is believed to have cracked the Riemann Hypothesis - which has
left mathematicians scratching their heads since it was first offered by German
Bernhard Riemann back in 1800s. He shared his proof at the International
Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science and, if his work turns out to be
true, he might win $1m (£657,000) for his work. The Riemann Hypothesis is recognized
one of the seven millennium puzzles in mathematics. In 2000, the Clay
Mathematics Institute in the US issued a prize fund for any person who cracked
seven mathematical puzzles that have been confused over for several years.

If Dr Enoch’s Proof is accepted, he will be the very
first person to crack a problem since the prize was founded. The problem revolves
around the dispersal of prime numbers and is debatably the most well-known
problem in mathematics since the Fermat’s Last Theorem was resolved by Dr
Andrew Wiles in 1994. Dr Enoch told the BBC World Service that he had been driven
to solve the problem by his very own students.

He told BBC: “The motivation was because my students
trusted that the solution could come from me - not because the financial reward
and that was why I started trying to solve the problem in the first place.”

In a report, the university said: “Dr Enoch first
investigated and then established the claims of Riemann. He went on to consider
and to correct the misconceptions that were communicated by mathematicians in
the past generations, thus paving way for his solutions and proofs to be
established.”